


the last of the real ones

by makgeolli



Category: John Wick (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Inspired by Fight Club, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 18:18:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12940989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makgeolli/pseuds/makgeolli
Summary: Tartarus only had two rules. One: fights were no-weapons, fists only; two: the fight was only over when one of them went down and didn’t get up again. The rules were simple, but the bouts were not. You either left Tartarus standing, or were carried out on a stretcher – there were no in-betweens.





	the last of the real ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



> Yes, this is a Pacific Rim/Fight Club/ John Wick fusion, and yes, I titled this after a [ Fall Out Boy song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YAAyUFL1GQ), which provided the music fuel to this fic.

Jaeger pilots weren’t supposed to leave the Shatterdome without first securing approval from the Marshal, but John had never been one for following the rules, not when there were ways around them. Besides, he wasn’t in any position to respond to _kaiju_ activity from the Breach. _Lo Spettro_ was still grounded in the maintenance bay while the jaeger tech crews worked to repair the damage she’d sustained in the latest battle. Damage didn’t really begin to describe it; _Lo Spettro_ had been more scrap than jaeger, with her command pod in shambles and her engines hopelessly gutted. Owain was gone, too – his co-pilot, the drift connection severed forever, ripped to shreds by the _kaiju_. One moment they’d been perfectly in sync, beating Razorfin back, forcing the _kaiju_ further from the shoreline, and the next -- there was _nothing_ , just a void where the drift had been, and the shriek of metal giving way, seawater rushing into the space where Owain had previously been.

It’d been a year, and the moment still haunted him; he dreamed of drowning, and then it wasn’t Owain outside the command pod, but Helen, fists pounding against the plexiglass, accusation in her eyes. He’d try to save her, but it always ended the same way – with him sinking, stuck fast in _Lo Spettro’s_ mangled command center, unable to do anything but watch as the _kaiju_ struck, jaws snapping shut around Helen, the water churning and growing darker with blood and viscera.

“I’m all right,” she had insisted, tinny and distant over the crackling phone connection. The _kaiju_ had hit Manhattan; they’d sealed off the city, prevented anyone from entering or leaving. Disaster containment, the news stations were saying, but to John, all it meant was that New York had become a prison, and Helen was caught in the middle of it. “I can’t just go. There are so many people who need help, and I can – I’m a nurse. It’s what I _do_. I can’t just walk away from this. Listen. I’ll be fine. I love you.” She had refused to leave. Not that it had mattered to John – he had been on his way to find her, would have gotten to her in time, if not for the second _kaiju_ incursion that wiped out the city. Instead, he’d arrived a week too late, to smoke, rubble, and bloated bodies, bobbing in the water.

John was not a creature of sentiment. Love was something he had never quite come to grips with. He’d never really been able to reciprocate tenderness, with Helen, but the rage that filled him in the aftermath of New York – _that_ , he understood all too well. Cold, calculating anger had propelled him through the Jaeger Program, from cadet to rookie to seasoned jaeger pilot, had made _Lo Spettro_ one of the deadliest jaegers that patrolled the Hong Kong shoreline. It had also made him a pressing concern for the Marshal, who’d flagged John for mandatory counselling. It wasn’t as bad as it sounded; John spent the designated hour every week in the therapist’s office running through mental scenarios of _kaiju_ fights, strategizing how best to incapacitate each and every adaptation they’d thrown at the jaegers so far. It was probably worse for the therapist, who had started to wear a fixed smile every time John stepped into her office.

Therapy would not fix him. That was fine, because John knew other ways of coping. Of turning the latent anger into action, and of forgetting – for a time – that anything existed beyond the need for survival. Which was why he’d left the Shatterdome tonight and ventured out, away from the city.

* * *

This close to the docks, and by extension, the Wall, the wind smelt like sea – like salt and ammonia, rot and rust, and quite a lot like despair. The waters in Kowloon Bay had turned toxic, fouled by years of pollution, and later, _kaiju_ blood and Jaeger fuel. The more superstitious fancied that this far out along the shoreline, you could smell the _kaiju_ coming before you saw them, and to some extent, this was true. _Kaiju_ stank, worse than fish guts and days-old excrement, but the chances were, if they were close enough that the smell was obvious, then you were already dead, or you would be soon – if not from being crushed by a falling building, torn in half by the _kaiju’s_ bulk, then from the poisonous slime they left in their wake, or drowned in the flood that inevitably accompanied them.

There was an entire shantytown here, pressed up against the Wall; a morass of shabby roofs and clapboard housing, bristling with bootleg antennae and laundry flapping in the breeze. It was, of course, entirely illegal and therefore, for all intents and purposes, invisible to the authorities - which made it a haunt for criminals, and those who didn’t wish to be found.

John wound his way through the twisting, labyrinthine maze of narrow alleys, lit only by the occasional flickering lantern. Broken glass crunched underfoot with each step, and the ground was slick with the green-grey moss that invariably crept in with the damp. His destination was a hole-in-the-wall bar in the heart of town. It was called Club Macau, but John was fairly sure the name was supposed to be ironic. For one, the bar didn’t live up to its name – it didn’t look like anything much, just a grubby, stained counter and a couple of tattered bar stools. For another, Macau was just a husk of a city. The mass, panicked exodus that wracked the coastal cities in the wake of _kaiju_ attacks had left Macau deserted, haunted only by strays and transients.

Tendo Choi nodded and smiled at John from his post behind the bar, but John registered the coiled tension in his shoulders, and he certainly didn’t miss the casual, almost lazy, dip of Tendo’s hand beneath the counter, no doubt already wrapped around the grip of his pistol.

“Good evening, Mr. Wick. Will it be your usual?”

That was the cue for the passphrase. Club Macau was just a front, guarded by Tendo and his bruisers; the _real_ attraction – Tartarus -  helmed by the D’Antonios, lay below it. It was likely, if everything failed – if the _kaiju_ got their way and the Wall crumbled to pieces – the end of the world would find the D’Antonios presiding over their lair, proud to the bitter end.

“ _Lasciate ogne speranaza, voi ch’intrate_ ,” John said, and Tendo relaxed at last, picking up a glass and beginning to dry it.

“Go on ahead. Hell awaits. Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Wick,” Tendo smiled, and John headed past him into the backroom, pressed the call button for the elevator.

The passphrase was one of Santino’s idiosyncrasies, and it reeked of pretension, as almost everything about Santino always did, in John’s experience. It was a little joke that no one entering Tartarus appreciated – _abandon all hope, ye who enter here_. Tartarus was a place where the detritus of the city invariably wound up, where the lost and the desperate and the vicious tangled in blood sport for the dangled promise of winning enough money to buy their way into legitimacy in the sheltered inland communities.

* * *

 

He’d found his way here courtesy of Santino. It’d been three months after getting the shit kicked out of him by Razorfin, and John had taken to spending his nights at various bars across the city, preferring to drink himself into a stupor rather than be plagued by nightmares. He’d had a tail on him most nights, one that he ignored once he figured that they weren’t planning on getting the jump on him – Ares, John later found out – and then, one evening, Santino had walked in, bold as brass and twice as gaudy, and helped himself to the bottle of bourbon that John was currently working his way through.

John had eyed him, wondering if it was worth the trouble of getting thrown out if he punched Santino.

“I hate seeing a perfectly good bottle of bourbon going to waste,” had been Santino’s first words to him, “It should be savored, instead of –” he flapped a hand, indicating the way John was knocking it back like it was water, mouth pursing in a moue of disdain. “Take you, for instance. John Wick. _Lo Spettro_. The best jaeger pilot this side of the coastline, and yet here you are, drinking yourself into oblivion.”

John made the mistake of engaging, instead of ignoring him. Later, he would blame it on the bourbon, and the smugness of Santino’s smirk. “So? You saying I should’ve gotten myself killed?” 

“No, no.” Santino laughed. “It’s only – you could be doing so much more. I’ve seen you go after the _kaiju_. A man like you – you are a fighter, no? You go after weakness, carve it out, bring your enemy down. No mercy. Yet, here, you’ve no purpose. No direction. Nowhere to channel all that anger. And that, my friend, is where I can help you.”

In the end, John had only followed him because Santino had piqued his curiosity, and he’d figured that if it came down to it, he could take the man out easily enough. John had still brought the bourbon along, though – he’d paid for the bottle and it would be a shame to leave it behind. Plus, it might be useful; he could use it as a shiv in a pinch.

That had been the beginning of an occasionally antagonistic, but mutually profitable partnership. John won fights for Santino, and took his cut of the winnings. It kept him, from the most part, from becoming untethered – the monotony of being cut out of the jaeger circuit at the Shatterdome had been wearing on him – and John’s wins kept Santino flush with money.

* * *

 

There was a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye; John tensed, but it was only Ares, Santino’s shadow. She slipped into the elevator after John, fingers dipping and sweeping through the air in crisp, clean motions. Ares signed like she fought, sharp and to the point. - Boss is in a mood. You’d best be quick about it. -

“He’s always in a mood.” That was nothing new. Santino was as temperamental as Gianna was measured and cool. The two were siblings, but they were nothing alike as far as John was concerned.

The elevator doors opened, and the noise that swelled and rose was an animal roar, the raw music of a crowd baying for blood, punctuated by loud, thumping bass. The sound was amplified by the walls that arced up above their heads, curved and covered in disturbingly organic-looking whorls. Tartarus had gotten its name because it had built from the skull of a _kaiju_. This particular _kaiju_ had been one of the earlier generations out of the Breach, one of the smaller ones, though ‘small’ didn’t really begin to describe it, since the smallest _kaiju_ were still several stories tall, and more than capable of levelling a city. Lights – blue and red and yellow – swept over the crowd, a dizzying swirl of color and movement. Languages mixed - Cantonese, Mandarin, English, with a smattering of other dialects, words firing rapidly as bets were taken, money changing hands before the fights began again in earnest. Ares flipped John a salute and melted into the crowd, either on the hunt for a drink, or on some enigmatic mission for Santino; John didn’t care which.

* * *

 

Santino was at his usual spot in the balcony, high above the seething crowd, absent-mindedly skimming a gold coin over his knuckles and back again, as was his habit. His expression was sour, as though he’d just bitten into a lemon. Something to do with Gianna, John guessed; nothing got on Santino’s nerves as much as sibling rivalry did.

“Took your damn time getting here.” Santino scowled, pocketing the coin and picking up the glass of wine next to him. Took a long drink from it, as if to try and steady himself. When Santino put the glass down, he seemed calmer, but his eyes were fever-bright in anticipation of violence. He jerked his head towards the direction of the ring, which was a sunken pit in the middle of Tartarus, illuminated by floodlights. Currently, it was occupied; John watched dispassionately as a prone body was lifted up onto a stretcher and hauled away. This late in the evening, the bouts had churned up the sand in the ring, left it darkened by sweat and blood. The victor stood alone, so still he might as well have been a statue, feet planted firmly in the sand. He was tall and broad-shouldered, almost intimidatingly so, and he carried himself with the sort of dangerous ease seasoned fighters did.

“Gianna found him,” Santino said, with the sort of scornful venom only he could pull off. “He’s been cleaning out the place all night. Which means seventy percent of tonight’s cut goes to her, and that’s fifty grand. _My_ money.”

He made a disgruntled noise as he saw the ladder being lowered into the ring again, and another contender clambering down to meet his fate. This one was whip-thin and had a slight limp. Santino rolled his eyes. “Bloody farce, if you ask me.”

John said nothing. The lights shifted to center on Gianna, high up on the opposite balcony from Santino. She looked as regal as always, diamonds glittering at her ears and throat, a fur stole draped across her shoulders, her cigarette a bright ember between her fingers. Gianna was the face and brains of Tartarus, the one who cut deals with the authorities to look the other way. Blood money had paid in part for the Wall and the continued operation of the Jaeger Program, helping to keep the _kaiju_ from overrunning Hong Kong altogether. It was also Gianna who announced the fights. Santino might snarl and plot all he wanted, but she ran the show, not him -- though for how much longer was anyone’s guess.

“Tartarus favors Cassian tonight,” she smiled, voice echoing across the arena. “As do we all. Five fights, five wins, and hopefully, many more to come. Next up, we have –” and then John tuned her out, returning his attention to the ring. It didn’t matter who Cassian’s contender was; the fight was all that mattered.

Cassian was relentless, hammering away at his opponent’s weaknesses with a brutal, precise single-mindedness. It was no surprise that the bout was a short-lived one. It didn’t take very long before the newest contender crumpled to the ground, groaning, and didn’t get up again. The crowd went wild, chanting Cassian’s name and stamping, so that for a few long minutes everything was a roar of sound.

When it finally subsided, Santino’s face was a mask of barely contained fury. “Finish him,” he gestured, the dismissal obvious, and John went. Not because Santino had told him to, but because the fight had lit something within him, something that only stirred when facing down _kaiju_. Cassian was not like the others scrambling to better their futures in the muck of the ring; Cassian was dangerous. Like him. Adrenaline surged in his veins, and his heart pounded in his ribcage, his body already squaring up for the fight.

The crowd knew him well enough by sight, and parted readily for him. Murmurs of _Lo Spettro_ trailed in his wake, but John took no notice; all his attention was focused on the ring, and what lay within. The metal of the ladder was cold against his fingers, and then he was in the ring. John shed his jacket, along with his Shatterdome-issued gun, and closed the distance between him and Cassian. The world was already narrowing down to the ring; nothing else existed for him outside of it.

Tartarus only had two rules. One: fights were no-weapons, fists only; two: the fight was only over when one of them went down and didn’t get up again. The rules were simple, but the bouts were not. You either left Tartarus standing, or were carried out on a stretcher – there were no in-betweens.

“You’re that Jaeger pilot, right? _Lo Spettro_?” Cassian’s voice betrayed a Chicago accent.

“You’re a long way from home,” John countered, watching him warily.

Cassian smiled. “So are you.”

And then he moved. John had been anticipating the strike, but even so, it was close; a few seconds slower and Cassian would’ve broken his ribs. As it was, he snapped out his hand, catching Cassian’s wrist scant centimeters from his side. _He’s strong,_ John thought – Cassian had been through six fights and didn’t even seem the least bit winded. He drove his fist into Cassian’s stomach, knocking the breath from him, still keeping Cassian’s arm twisted against his back. Kicked his legs out from under him, and slammed his head into the ground. Once, twice -- and then Cassian surged up, twisting away from the ground. His leg snapped forward, connecting with John’s lip and knocking his head back, and the taste of iron exploded in a starburst of pain in his mouth. Cassian pressed his advantage, striking low, fists connecting with John’s ribs. He stumbled, a step back, and then another, shaking his head, blood in his mouth, a thundering in his ears.

John spat. Blood spattered the sand. Cassian came at him again, but this time he was ready; he feinted and spun, foot lashing out in an arc that connected with the side of Cassian’s head, snapping it to the side. Followed it up with a blow to his kidneys. John wasn’t moving quite as easily as he had previously; his side burned, the pain intensifying with every inhale. Possibly a bruised rib, but more likely broken. Cassian staggered, but only momentarily; he was up again in moments, seizing John by the collar of his shirt and toppling them over into the sand, where they grappled, each one struggling to get the better of the other.

It’d been a long time since he was so evenly matched with someone; the last had been Owain. It was exhilarating and maddening at the same time – John wanted the fight to be over and done with, and he didn’t want it to end, either, because there was something about it that almost felt like being in the drift, and he’d not felt that in so _long_.

 John’s breath came in ragged gasps; one eye was swollen shut, impeding his field of vision, but he didn’t let that stop him, raining blows on Cassian, the same way John had seen him take down his previous opponents. Everything hurt; Cassian’s knees wedged in his side, the arm around his neck, choking off his air supply. John used his fists like hammers, driving his arms and elbows into Cassian’s ribs again and again and again. It was a war of attrition; endurance to the bloody end. Eventually, Cassian was forced to stop, but John kept on, and finally Cassian went down, and stayed that way, passed out on the sand.

* * *

 

It hurt to bend down, to pick up his jacket and his gun, and to walk out of Tartarus, his winnings in his pocket. John’s steps were wobbling by the time he made it back into the Shatterdome, spots swimming in front of his one functioning eye. It didn’t help that Aurelio was lying in wait to waylay him at his room.

“Look at you,” he said, disapproval layering his voice, and John half-staggered, half-collapsed onto his bunk, closing his eyes. “You’re a mess, is what you are.”

John grunted. Words were currently too much effort to string together.

More rustling, and a weight settled on the side of his bunk. Something cold was pressed to his eye – an ice pack, John realized, with a low groan of relief. Aurelio was less than gentle in cleaning his wounds, but John was content to lie still in a haze of pain and exhaustion.

“How’d… you know?” he managed, and Aurelio paused.

“ _Lo Spettro_. Every time you’re in a fight, she moves with you. Rattles her harness around a whole lot and spooks the hell out of the techs. It’s as if she’s with you, in the drift, except that she’s powered down.”

Aurelio must’ve caught the look on his face, because he went on, “Jaeger superstition, my foot. Dead of the night, I’m on the skeleton crew patching her up, see, and she starts _moving_ like she’s got a mind of her own – it’s happened more times than I can count, and it still gives me the creeps every single damn time. So that’s how I know. Your own fucking jaeger’s ratting you out. She’s been in dry dock too long, that bloody piece of work.”

His voice was uncharacteristically affectionate. Aurelio rarely got emotional, except over the jaegers. He’d worked on all of them at the Shatterdome, and _Lo Spettro_ had been his brainchild. He’d drawn up her schematics, then overseen the process of turning _Lo Spettro_ from blueprints on a page, into the _kaiju_ -killing machine that she was.

Aurelio had moved on to talking about how the Marshal was going to blow a gasket when he found out, but by then John wasn’t paying attention any more – he let the darkness pull him under, and he slept the dreamless sleep of the comatose and the dead.

* * *

 

Predictably, John was barred from exiting the Shatterdome for the foreseeable future; a sentence that lost most of its bite when he had difficulty walking. It wasn’t as if John was going anywhere in a hurry, anyway. The doctor’s verdict was broken ribs, a fractured wrist and a concussion, with strict instructions to rest for the next few weeks.

So rest was what John did, in between watching the techs complete their work on _Lo Spettro_ and card games with the rest of the pilots. He didn’t like it, but the faster he mended, the quicker he could be out in the field again, now that _Lo Spettro_ was fighting fit. The only thing left was finding a drift-compatible pilot, something Aurelio assured him the Marshal was working on. “He’s figured he’d rather have you busy fending off _kaiju_ than having you underfoot,” Aurelio had said the last time he’d dropped by a progress report on _Lo Spettro._ “Word is, they might be seconding another pilot to the Shatterdome. Guy was posted way up north. Hokkaido coast, in Aomori? Anyway. Apparently, he got really busted up or something, but he’ll be by in the next few weeks. Marshal’s thinking of giving him and you a trial run.”

* * *

 

Getting back in _Lo Spettro_ ’s command pod was like welcoming an old friend – the drift surrounded him, and it was just him, and the jaeger, man and machinery moving in sync; though because John was the only pilot, he couldn’t sustain the neural connection for longer than three minutes. It was frustrating, because he wanted to be out _there_ , and here he was, stuck in dry dock.

John was clambering down the ladder from _Lo_ _Spettro’s_ command pod to the dry dock, sweat plastering his suit to his back, when Aurelio hailed him from the ground. “Pilot’s here!”

Said pilot was waiting in the training gym. John narrowed his eyes – he would know that accent and that build _anywhere_ , especially when he’d tangled with the man a few months before.

Cassian laughed. “Well played. You had me pissing blood for _weeks_ , Mr. Wick.”  

“Broke my ribs, you sure as hell deserved it.” John nodded, sizing him up.

“Don’t you think it’s funny here we are, about to go at it again? They’re saying you might be my new co-pilot. I’m thinking, you’re gonna have to keep up, old man. Not gonna be so easy on you _this_ time.” Cassian tossed him a stave; John caught it, sinking fluidly into a defensive stance.

“I’ll show you more than keep up,” John growled.

Cassian grinned. “Bring it on. It’ll be a hell of a time.”

And it was.

* * *

**five months later:**

_Lo Spettro_ took to the water almost eagerly after a year and a half out of action, surf churning about the jaeger as she surged through the water, leaving the sea roiling in her wake. Further out to sea, one of the kaiju that had been savaging Crimson Typhoon broke off in its attack and swung towards them. This one looked like an eel – if eels had alligator-shaped jaws, that was. “Guessing that one’s Splitjaw, then.” Cassian snickered, “Also, can we please not let Aurelio name one of these things again? I mean, seriously?”

Control neglected to answer, and Cassian rolled his eyes theatrically at John, who suppressed a snort.

Splitjaw reared out of the water, jaws snapping open, and spat, regurgitating some kind of slime out of its throat. John had no idea what the hell that was, but chances were, it was nothing good. Here, in the drift, their minds were bound as tightly as their bodies, and Cassian knew what John intended without any words needing to be exchanged. They pivoted in unison, _Lo Spettro_ dancing aside neatly to avoid the giant gobbet of spit. Splitjaw roared, displeased, and shot towards them, a sinuous streak powering through the water.

It was on them before they had time to react, coiling itself around the jaeger like an overenthusiastic boa constrictor, winding tighter with each furl of its body. “Fuck! Gun arm’s pinned,” Cassian reported, straining to no avail to try and jolt the kaiju free. The low growl of _Lo Spettro’s_ engines kicked into high gear, machinery snarling in protest at being put under so much strain. Outside, metal creaked and groaned, threatening to give way under Splitjaw’s weight.

“You think it can actually crack this open?” Cassian glanced up at the rapidly narrowing view of the outside world.

“Don’t know. Don’t intend to find out.” John hit the controls to vent the engines. _Lo Spettro_ responded, releasing high-pressure irradiated steam out its sides and back, and in the next instant, the jaeger shook wildly as Splitjaw thrashed, recoiling from them and sliding back into the water.

Cassian fired. The laser made the water boil and foam, and Splitjaw resurfaced, looking worse for the wear. Scales were slaking off in large chunks, presumably from where it had been burned. “Hell, yeah!” Cassian crowed, but the kaiju wasn’t done yet; it flung itself forward yet again, determined to finish the job, or die trying.

This time, though, they were ready. John swung the scythe down, gouging past scales and sinew, driving the blade as deep as possible into flesh. The impact shuddered through _Lo Spettro_ , but he kept going, carving up the kaiju even as it hurled itself against the jaeger’s side, jaws clattering against the metal carapace that kept them safe. Cassian fired again, and then, in one last, terrible death rattle, the kaiju turned belly-up, shorn neatly through the middle, smoke rising from its carcass.

“Command, Splitjaw’s down.” John reported over the comms.

“Another one in the bag,” Cassian grinned. “Not bad for a first run, you think?”

“Yeah.”

They watched it sink slowly beneath the surface, its eyes gone fogged and glassy, the way kaiju eyes always did when they died, all that fierce alien intelligence drained away from it.

Something fiery and bright flashed off to starboard, and John tore his eyes away; Crimson Typhoon’s weapons systems were back online, and it had unleashed its main cannon, blasting the kaiju that had been harassing it to smithereens. There was, John thought, no better sight. 

“Drinks at the bar later?” Cassian glanced over at him, and this close in the drift, John knew that wasn’t all he was asking. Cassian's thoughts unfolded in his mind: the taste of bourbon, mingled with gin, not as unpleasant as it sounded, not when they were tangled together between the sheets, skin to skin, Cassian’s mouth on his, riding the post-battle high in other, infinitely more pleasurable ways, and he nodded.

“Always,” he said, the word a promise he would keep, for as long as he could, and they turned towards home.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for any inaccuracies regarding the fight scenes. I tried my best, but it's been a while since I had to write any!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading! <3


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